Since our forum deals in a large part with the issue of Evolution vs. ID, we often have nice little debates. A lot of the time, we like to substantiate our arguments by citing outside sources. Much of the time, these sources exist as articles on the internet.

Linking to articles is great. There are ways to make it better.

First of all, it's nicest to format your link with bbcode, to make it simple to click.

Hey guys! I found a really cool thing [url=http://www.ridiculouslylongurl.com/asdfkf.php?diadf=asdlfkjasdlfkjasldfkjasdlkfjdkfjalsdkjflasjdf&fdasf=adsfwertpearairtpoivbbn]here[/url].

The user sees:

Hey guys! I found a really cool thing here.

Bbcode is confusing sometimes, though. So, instead of posting that ridiculously long url, there's a very nifty tool: TinyURL.

It takes your long url, and gives you a very short one back. The short one redirects to the long one when you click on it. Thus, your link produces the same results, but doesn't obstruct your post quite as much.

The other problem that we sometimes face is that people like to link to places like the New York Times, Chicago Times, or Elitist Scientific Journal Website. All these places, probably including the last one even though I just made it up, require registration and login to view articles, because they're mean that way.

For this, we have another nifty little tool: BugMeNot. It's a website that contains login/password combinations for almost every commonly-used resource that requires login to use. Just type in the website you're looking to access, and it'll spit something back out. Cool, no?